Meditations on Children and the Planets

For Barry and Kelley Bortoli, Thursday was a chance to wholly commit themselves to their children and express hope for the scores of others worldwide suffering from war, poverty and disease.

The Bortolis and about 30 other like-minded people gathered at the Community Center in Casitas Springs to celebrate children and expand world consciousness with an afternoon of music, prayer and meditation.

“We came because of the children,” said Kelley Bortoli, who is pregnant. “People don’t always see them as a benefit, and it’s time we start.”

The group meditation was a high point for everyone involved.

As the sun peeked through a shroud of gray clouds, participants joined hands around the center’s towering sycamore tree.

Participants raised their joined hands above their heads and closed their eyes in meditation, one man playing a didgeridoo--a long, painted wooden pipe used by Aborigines during meditation--while another tapped a bongo drum.

After silent meditation, celebrants sang, made verbal commitments to children and prayed.

Venica Ftacek, who helped organize the reflective festival, said she was inspired by her godmother, who works with gang members in Santa Paula and Oxnard and complained of the lack of community involvement in the lives of children.

“I just wanted people to make a commitment to children,” the 23-year-old Ftacek said. “I wanted them to bring them [the children] into their lives and into their hearts.”

Thursday’s New Age shindig coincided with similar events being held in more than 40 countries around the world designed to create a unified global consciousness focused on humankind’s relationship with the planet.

The date was chosen because Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus, Earth, the sun and the moon were, for a brief moment, aligned in a star-shaped hexagonal pattern, according to GaiaMind, the San Francisco-based group that coordinated the larger, worldwide event.

Some astrologers see this astronomical alignment as symbolically significant because it occurred close to both the beginning of a new millennium and the Age of Aquarius.

While no one expected to change the consciousness of the world, they said all they really need to do is make a change within their own lives.

“I came because I think we all need to recognize children as a blessing,” Bortoli said. “It’s time people, whether they have children or not, start seeing them as the most important things in the world.”